The 1k Niche Property Project – Month 4 – December 2021
Come back to the 1K Niche Property Project and now that we have the 2021 holiday season behind us, we’ve officially completed the fourth month in this journey.
There’s a lot of exciting stuff starting to happen, but before we dive into all of the changes that happened over the last month I want to take just a second to remind everybody of our goal.
The Goal:
As the name of this project somewhat implies, the goal of the 1K Niche Property Project is to build a niche property (a small website focused on creating content in a specific niche) from zero visits and zero dollars in revenue to $1000 in monthly recurring revenue.
As we discussed in the past (click here to see last month’s update) we are also testing several different theories along the way to see if we can speed up this process.
Generally speaking, you can expect this process to take somewhere between 12 and 18 months, but with the combination of things we are trying we are hoping to reach this goal within 8 to 10 months from the launch of the site.
The History:
If you haven’t been following along with our journey so far, I wanted to give you a quick recap so you can understand how we got to where we are today.
In month one of this journey, we started some keyword research began the process of content creation, and had the website built by our friends over at niche website builders.
In month two, our first 44 articles were published and niche website builders handed the site over to us.
Last month, we began to see some substantial traffic growth (between 10 and 15 visits a day from organic search) and start to formulate our plan for moving forward.
The Activity This Month:
If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that up until this point we have been relying exclusively on the original content we published for our traffic growth (44 articles).
You’re about to see why we not only recommend waiting a few months to see where your content begins to rank, but also why we were curious what our initial burst of content would start to bring in, in terms of traffic.
Traffic:
Generally speaking, if you’ve ever heard Scott or myself talk about how long it takes for a post to rank its final position in Google, we typically say somewhere between five and six months (or maybe longer for a very competitive term).
This time delay was part of the reason we wanted to test the content blitz theory (where we published a large volume of content all at once) as a part of this experiment.
At the end of month four (about two months after our initial 44 articles were published) you can start to see this in action.
If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that last month we averaged about 10 organic visits per day over the month (closer to 15 visits per day towards the end of the month).
You may also remember that we were starting to see large growth in the number of keywords we were indexing for and the number of searches our site was showing on the first page 4.
This month we’re starting to see that accelerate even more.
Over the last 30 days, we have seen 625 sessions come from organic search almost a 98% increase over month three of this experiment.
The thing that has me even more excited than a 98% increase over the last period, Is that while we averaged about 21 sessions per day in month 4, the last few weeks have been closer to 30 sessions a day and growing.
Additionally, this period Included Christmas day and New Year’s day, both of which are notoriously slow days in terms of organic traffic.
While I am still leaning towards creating a large volume of additional content to help us achieve our goal, seeing substantial growth like this on the existing content makes me extremely excited to see what will happen over the next 3 to 4 months.
In fact, if we were able to sustain this level of growth we would likely be able to achieve the traffic needed to reach our $1000 per month goal by month 10 or 11 of this experiment.
That being said, we are going to add some additional content to this site and already have a few articles in the works, because I NEVER like leaving things to chance.
I’ll be covering that in more detail below.
Keyword Rankings:
As I mentioned above, we saw a huge increase in the amount of organic traffic between months three and four of this experiment.
You may also remember that we often talk about using keyword rankings as a leading indicator of what may happen in the months to come.
If you read last month’s update, you may remember that we saw a 254% increase in the number of keywords that we were indexed for.
This means we should have seen a large increase (like we saw) in the number of organic visits we saw in month four versus month three.
Taking a look at this month’s keyword rankings, we are still seeing large growth in the number of keywords we are being indexed for, but nothing close to the 200% growth we saw in month three.
This is completely normal and it’s expected to happen and it’s a large part of the reason that we are planning to create some additional content.
If you take a look at the chart below you’ll be able to see the difference in the number of keywords that we are ranking for
As you can see, were averaging just under 52% growth in the total number of keywords that are being indexed.
Despite the large growth in the total number of keywords that are indexed and the number of keywords that are ranked on the second page or higher, the thing that has me the most excited is the 50% growth in the keywords ranking on the top of the page 1 (between spots one and three).
Despite the fact they were only seeing a 50% growth here (that’s somewhat expected) this is really where the rubber hits the road in terms of organic traffic.
The more of these keywords we can snag between the one and three positions, the larger increase in organic traffic we will have.
While 50% growth in this area may not seem like a lot, it’s important to keep in mind that between months two and three of this experiment we only saw a 15% growth in the same area.
That previous 15% growth led to almost a 100% increase in organic traffic over the last month.
Seeing such a big jump like this for the highest-ranking terms means that I can expect to see large growth in organic traffic in the next month of this experiment.
While I’m excited about this growth and the expected growth for the next 2 to 3 months based on what we’re seeing in the keyword rankings (I’m dancing very poorly as we speak) I do expect the number of new keywords was being indexed for to continue to decrease over the next few months.
After all, since we haven’t added any new content to the site, at some point we do have to expect that that growth will stop.
This is a large part of the reason we are taking the proactive approach to content creation that we will be using moving forward.
While it would be GREAT if our initial 44 articles could carry us over the finish line (it’s NOT out of the realm of possibility), we would rather spend a little bit more time and money on content creation NOW than need to worry about it as our deadline approaches.
Content Creation:
As I’ve alluded to several times throughout this post, we are finally getting back on the content creation train.
During this period, we only created and posted one new article, but that will serve as the benchmark for a new type of content that we are trying to see how well it will rank in this niche.
I spent a few hours on a piece of content to serve as the guide for our writers (we have two different writers currently) to create between 10 and 15 new pieces of content in this style.
While these pieces have yet to be delivered (I expect them to be delivered during the fifth month of this project and have a few in the draft as of the time I’m writing this article), on extremely excited about the results I’m seeing so far with just the article I have written.
While the article hasn’t been published long enough to generate any significant traffic, I’m already starting to see some signs of life.
In addition to the new style of content that we are testing out, over the next month or two our goal is also to finish the original content plan.
If you remember back to month one of this experiment, when we did our initial keyword research, we singled out about 70 ideas we wanted to publish to the site.
When it came down to hitting our budget that we had agreed to with niche website builders, this idea’s list was whittled down to the 44 most important.
Now that we are starting to see the results of those initial 44 articles, we put the wheels in motion to create the rest of the original content plan, which is likely to push us over the top and get us to our goal.
While it’s hard to say exactly how many pieces of published content we will end up with on this site before we reach our $1000 goal, based on what I’m seeing so far it looks to be about 100 articles.
The Money:
Despite all of the substantial changes we’re seeing on the site, month 4 was (like months two and three) relatively boring on the money front.
Expenses
Even though we’re back in content creation mode, since we haven’t received any fully published content back from our writers, we didn’t incur any additional expenses during month four of this process.
I do expect to be writing a fairly large check for around 30 articles in month five, so keep your eyes peeled for that.
Month 4 Expenses: $0
Earnings:
Since we haven’t turned on any ad networks at this point (currently expecting to do that around the six or seven-month mark) and we have actively pushed any affiliate links worth other sales opportunities, we also have not generated any revenue at this point.
However, within the next month or two, I expect to see this starting to shift as our organic traffic continues to increase and our new content comes online.
Month 4 Earnings: $0
Net Earnings
Month 0 Expenses: -$9,000
Month 0 Earnings: $0
Month 1 Expenses: $0 (Zero Additional)
Month 1 Earnings: $0
Month 2 Expenses: $0 (Zero Additional)
Month 2 Earnings: $0
Month 3 Expenses: $0 (Zero Additional)
Month 3 Earnings: $0
Month 4 Expenses: $0 (Zero Additional)
Month 4 Earnings: $0
—————————————Month 4 Net: -$9,000
That’s A Wrap:
I have to admit, that while I was optimistic at the end of last month’s update, I’ve never been more excited about this project than I am right now.
While we did see a decreased number of new keywords being indexed (in terms of percentage) that was somewhat expected and we’re still seeing positive growth on that front.
Additionally, we’re seeing growth in the most important range of keywords being indexed (those keywords that rank between the first and third position inside of search results) and that’s accelerating as compared to previous months.
While I’m not quite a believer that the original 44 pieces of content that we created are enough to get us across the finish line, I am confident at this point that completing the original content plan and combining that with the experiment we’re conducting for a slightly different kind of content that we normally create is going to be more than enough to get us to our goal at around the nine or 10-month mark.
Make sure to stay tuned for the month six update and if you’d like to learn how we go through this process, find the perfect niche, and choose the content we create, make sure to check out the full Niche Properties training, Here.
